"The rate at which the Google computing system has grown is as remarkable as its size. In March 2001, when the company was serving about 70 million Web pages daily, it had 8,000 computers, according to a Microsoft researcher granted anonymity to talk about a detailed tour he was given at one of Google's Silicon Valley computing centers. By 2003 the number had grown to 100,000.
Today even the closest Google watchers have lost precise count of how big the system is. The best guess is that Google now has more than 450,000 servers spread over at least 25 locations around the world. The company has major operations in Ireland, and a big computing center has recently been completed in Atlanta. Connecting these centers is a high-capacity fiber optic network that the company has assembled over the last few years."
This is so awesome. And now, my favorite joke (or perhaps amusing insight is a better term) that I myself made up.
Suppose that Google, with its enormous network of computers, becomes, as many suspect it will, the origin of the global computer brain, known as SkyNet from The Terminator series of movies.
Now this new computer network intelligence would get all of its knowledge by surfing the web which now includes video clips, audio clips, newspapers clips from around the world, 50 million blogs, and most importantly, a huge collection of porn of all imaginable kinds.
I shudder to think what conclusions about humanity such a computer would draw.
Although I suspect those conclusions would be pretty accurate...
© Stephen Clarke-Willson, 2006 - All Rights Reserved
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